Until the End of the World

Decheser mentioning the beauty of digital artifacts in scrambled web cam footage. That reference sprang some thinking about Wim Wender’s sci-fi classic, ‘Until the End of the World’ featuring digital scrambled visualizations (profoundly helping blind people to see through some new science). It’s a magnificent movie, very low key and it really deserves a viewing. Noteworthy sound track.

8 Replies to “Until the End of the World”

  1. At its core, this is a film about the sometimes-destructive nature of obsession – the central character’s obsession with the object of her desire, her former lover’s obsession with quantifying their relationship, the obsession of bounty hunters with their quarry, the obsession of a son’s desperate hope for his father’s approval and that father’s obsession with cutting-edge science taking precedence over any interpersonal considerations – with the exception of his obsessive love for his wife. This film is an epic, dream-like study of the human cost of all-consuming passion.

    It’s also a lot of fun. Wim Wenders was smart enough to place the timeline of events in this film no more than ten years on from shooting, thus taking advantage of newly-emergent technology showcased in ingenious ways as well as avoiding the dated look that plagues many science fiction films a decade or two after their release.

    The soundtrack is amazing. I have personally worn-out or loaned-out seven separate cds and cassettes. It has been the soundtrack of my life for the better part of 15 years.

    As a final word I would like to add that this film resembles a lucid dream state, one of those dreams you awaken from and attempt to describe (“…Well, then I was in Australia, and there were these guys chasing me so I got in a plane and then I was in a laboratory, except it was in a cave…”)

    This film begins with a dream and it ends with several recovering dream addicts adrift on a planet which appears to be recovering from a nightmare, a nightmare they seemed to have missed entirely in the all-encompassing pursuit of their heart’s desires.

  2. The soundtrack is probably my often played music.
    Now if there was a way to get hold of a region 1 version of the directors cut, that would be terriffic

  3. I had forgotten about this one pal. Thanks for the reminder. I remember one of those midnight movie showings at the little cinema around the corner from the art college. Incredible movie.

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